Acme Aims To Keep Patented Alternative Touch Alive

July 10, 1992|By JACK ZINK, Theater Writer

All the show-biz insiders in South Florida know that nothing important is supposed to happen in the summer -- no you gotta be there opening nights. But if there were such a thing, it would uncork tonight on the back side of South Beach.

Note that the tariff is suggested. This is the Acme, always proud of its street smarts and street appeal, trying to adjust to the weighty mantle of patronage. And this is July.

Tonight`s opening of A Cradle of Sparrows is a milestone for the troupe, and everyone involved knows it. It is also an important turning point in regional theater because it is crucial that the Acme grows into its new, expensive space without being tamed by it. Too many other troupes have been declawed by success.

The Acme ensemble won`t tame easily, at any rate. The troupe is kicking off with its annual summer new play festival, three main stage productions and a play reading series that runs through Sept. 6. Then, on Oct. 14, a five-play winter season moves into position.

All three summer plays are world premieres, and all five winter attractions are hot numbers the respectable regional theaters -- such as the Coconut Grove and Caldwell playhouses -- wouldn`t touch.

OFFERS AN ALTERNATIVE

Since its first productions about five years ago in a Miami Design District hovel, the Acme has reveled in a growing reputation as a spitfire alternative theater company, even when its actors were playing to empty seats.

But know this: The Acme does not muck about in sleazeball, soft-porn fringe art. It is a descendant of the historic New York and Berlin agitprop theaters of the `20s and `30s, not the basement schlock-shock theater of the `80s.

The Acme has always been more thought-provoking than controversial. For that, it has won lots of admirers who have helped keep it alive through one backstage crisis after another.

``This latest move has been both an easy and difficult task at the same time,`` new executive director John Caliste said this week. ``Easy because the company has a good reputation and does good work; difficult because as usual it`s trying to do so much in a short time.``

After the Miami Design District, the Acme moved into a 50-seat back room at the Strand restaurant, in what was becoming the heart of the new, trendy South Beach. The actors got kicked out when the owners decided they needed a bigger bar to handle weekend sidewalk cruisers.

The troupe spent the past year trying to fill the 500-seat Colony Theatre on Miami Beach, with plenty of help from cultural movers and shakers such as impresaria Judy Drucker. But the Acme wanted a more intimate, permanent home. It looked, briefly, as if it might find one in an empty bay on the Lincoln Road Mall. But the mall is beginning to show life signs, and landlords already have jacked up the rents to yuppie proportions.

The Acme hired Caliste away from a publishing job at an arts magazine in Jacksonville on March 1 to put its own financial and administrative house in order. Then the troupe and its board faced the reality that nothing on South Beach, which they accurately determined is their lifeline, would come cheap anymore.

MOVING ON UP

The board pledged to cover $100,000 per year in rent alone for the next six years so the Acme could lease a huge former Masonic temple on Alton Road. On top of that, the production budget for the shows beginning tonight through next spring is $150,000. And then there are salaries for permanent staff members, desks for them to sit at, office supplies and postage, etc.

Those are stratospheric numbers for an organization that has known only a hand-to-mouth existence for most of its history. Caliste jokes about the fact that though the numbers have changed, the existence continues pretty much as it was. That`s what he was hired to change.

There are several pluses about the new space, the top-most being that the new home is on a major road in South Beach with permanent visibility, Caliste said.

Another is the space itself. The Acme is converting the second floor to a 3,000-square-foot office and performance space with a 150-seat arena theater. There is room downstairs for a scene shop, but most of the street level will be rentable to other arts groups and a boutique or two, and thus help defray costs.

The ensemble`s reputation already has begun to attract grants and corporate backers; Caliste`s hiring was made possible by a challenge grant, and AT&T is helping to underwrite A Cradle of Sparrows.